Ј ј — je
«je» is a consonant of Serbian, the “Serbian Cyrillic” script, read as “y as in "yes"”. An ordinary y as in "yes". In the Latin script: j. For example, in the word “један” — one. The Serbian alphabet has 30 letters in total, and this character can be played right here. Where English sneaks a glide into "yes" or "yule", Serbian writes a separate letter: ja, ju, jo are j plus a vowel, not special letters. It appears, for example, in the word “добро јутро” — good morning.
In short
| Character | Ј ј |
| Name | je |
| Sound | y as in "yes" |
| What it is | a consonant |
In our course the character comes 11th of 30, its neighbours in the course are и and к, appears in 512 words of this site.
How it sounds
An ordinary y as in "yes". In the Latin script: j
Other written forms
The same character is written differently on a shop sign and in a book. Here are all the forms you may meet.
| Form | Character | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Latin | j | — |
The character in a word
A lone character is hard to remember: memory holds on to meaning, and a letter has none. The word it stands in provides that anchor.
- једанjedanone
The character in the “the six letters with no english twin” group
Everything the Latin alphabet lacks. Four of them are half-pairs: Serbian hears a soft and a hard sound where English makes do with one (the soft ch against the hard ch, the soft dj against the hard dj), and telling them apart by ear is the hardest listening task in the language.
Words with this character
How to remember this character
A single letter is the hardest thing to remember: memory has nothing to hold on to — a character has no meaning. A three-step loop works: see the character, try to recall the sound (for «je» it is “y as in "yes"”, as in the word “један”), see the right answer.
And come back to it the next day, not in an hour: a check a day or two later beats a check the same day. Nobody holds the whole alphabet — 30 letters — at once.
- It is better to test yourself the next day than at the end of the same session. That is why a word comes back to you tomorrow.checked many timesAdesope, Trevisan & Sundararajan, 2017, Review of Educational Research 87(3) · g = 0.82 when tested a day or two later, against 0.56 on the same day.
- Studying a little every day gets more into your head than spending the same total time in one sitting.checked many timesDonovan & Radosevich, 1999, Journal of Applied Psychology 84(5) · 63 studies compared, difference d = 0.46 — a sizeable figure for a learning effect.
Frequently asked
How does the Serbian character ј read?
As “y as in "yes"” — it is a consonant of the “Serbian Cyrillic” script. An ordinary y as in "yes". In the Latin script: j. For example, in the word “један” — one.
What is the letter ј called?
Je. A character's name and its sound are different things in the Serbian script: it is called “je” and reads as “y as in "yes"”. Learn the second one: the name only helps when the alphabet is recited aloud.
What can ј be confused with?
Where English sneaks a glide into "yes" or "yule", Serbian writes a separate letter: ja, ju, jo are j plus a vowel, not special letters. Similar characters are best studied side by side and deliberately compared: learned on different days, they stay separate and get mixed up at their first meeting inside a word.